Privacy, cookies, and third party services

Privacy Policy

Working in the fields of transparency and accountability, mySociety thinks hard and
cares very much about the privacy and security of our users: the length of this
privacy policy is one result of that. We know no-one goes through Privacy Policies for
fun though, so we’ve tried to keep it a clear and reasonably quick read.

We hope it covers everything you need to know, but if you still have any questions
please feel free to contact us.

What information we collect and how we use it

When you submit a report, we pass on your details, and details of the issue, to the
council contact or contacts responsible for the area where you located the issue, or
other relevant body such as TfL.

When you make a report

When you use FixMyStreet to send a report, you provide us with personal information
including:

Your name

Contact details

We send this information to the body responsible for fixing your issue, as per your
choice of category and location.

At the same time, your report appears on the FixMyStreet website. Your email address
and phone number are not published, and your name is only published if you have opted
to do so.

Some councils use FixMyStreet on their own websites. If you make a report within the
boundaries of one of these councils (either through FixMyStreet.com or via the council
website), it will be published on both sites.

FixMyStreet provides RSS/JSON feeds which allow anyone to publish reports on their own
website or page. Typically these feeds consist of reports made within a specific local
area, and are published on community or local interest sites.

Note that anything you include in the body of your report will be published in one or
all of the places listed above, so please take care to keep personal information such
as your contact details to the correct fields.

We store your personal details, along with your password where used (passwords are
stored in a format that is unreadable to anyone — including us — known as a hash) and
any reports or updates you make, in our own database.

These are accessible only to FixMyStreet administrators who adhere to strict internal
data-handling policies, and, where a council is a FixMyStreet Pro client, to council
staff, whose own data-handling and security policies will apply.

When you add an update

When you add an update to a report,
we record this along with the initial report and your user data.

Updates are published on the website but not routinely sent to the council except in
cases where a council has opted for full integration. You may opt to include your
name; your email address is not published.

When you subscribe to an alert by email

We collect your email address, which we store with the details of whichever alert/s
you have subscribed to.

When you contact the support team

Your message will be accessible to our small team of support staff, who adhere to
strict internal data-handling policies.

Your personal information is never shared, or used for purposes other than those
listed above, unless we are obliged to by law.

Research

We sometimes use data from FixMyStreet, or share it with trusted third parties, for
research. This data is completely anonymised and contains no identifying details such
as names, email addresses or the content of reports. Our Research Data Release policy
may be seen on request.

What happens when you use FixMyStreet

Making a report

When your council responds to your report, if you have provided us with an email
address, in most cases their reply will go directly to your email inbox. This
response, and any subsequent correspondence, happens outside the FixMyStreet
system, except in the case of some councils which have integrated with FixMyStreet
so that their responses and auto-updates are published on the report page. If you
have submitted via phone verification, you may not receive any response from the
council, depending on how their systems are set up.

We email you if someone leaves an update on a report you’ve made.

If your report is particularly interesting, our Communications Manager may get in
touch, as we like to feature notable requests on the
mySociety blog (or just
let us know directly!).

We only ever send you emails in relation to your reports or use of the site.

Subscribing to alerts

We’ll send you an automated email every time someone makes a report within the area
you specify, or when updates are made to a report you’ve opted to follow. The
frequency of these emails will depend on how large your chosen area is and how many
reports are made within it, but you won’t get more than one an hour.

Unsubscribing

How do I stop receiving emails from you?

Every alert email we send contains an unsubscribe link at the bottom for you to stop
receiving that alert.

Legal basis for processing

In using FixMyStreet for any of the functions listed above (sending a
report, leaving an update, email alerts or site registration), we are
processing your data under the legal basis 6(1)(f) – legitimate interests.
We assert that we have a legitimate charitable and commercial interest in
giving people an easy and public way to report street problems, even if they
don't know who the problems should go to, and in sending them updates or
alerts. The benefits of reporting problems publicly are that others can
quickly see what has already been reported, so it prevents the council from
having to deal with duplicates. It also creates a snapshot for local
communities, so it's easy to see what the common problems are in a given
area, and how quickly they get fixed. Other local residents can browse, read
and comment on problems – and perhaps even offer a solution.

Retention periods and your right to removal

Reports and updates

Except in exceptional circumstances, we do not delete reports or updates made through
FixMyStreet. Historic FixMyStreet reports provide an invaluable resource for
researchers into the quantity and type of street problems made across the UK during
the years the site has been running. This research can help inform civic planners,
developers, coders, historians and social scientists, among others.

Therefore, if you ask for a report to be removed, in most cases we will instead invite
you to anonymise it, so that there is no public connection between the content and
your name. You can anonymise reports singly, or in bulk, by logging in to your account
and clicking on the ‘“Hide your name” link beside the time and date of your report.
From here you may anonymise this report or all reports you have made.

Your personal information

As well as your report or update appearing on the FixMyStreet website, your details,
including name and email address, are stored in our admin system.

If you submit a report but do not click on the confirmation email, your report will
not be sent to the council; however, the report and your details remain in our system
and are accessible to site administrators.

Please contact us if you would like your details to be removed from our admin
database.

Support mail

If you contact FixMyStreet via our support email address we keep your message for two
years at which point they will be automatically deleted.. This is to aid continuity
and so that we can view any historic context which may have bearing on subsequent
support mail, even if members of the support staff change. Support staff adhere to
internal privacy policies which may be viewed on request.

Your right to object

The General Data Protection Regulation gives you the right to object to our
processing of your personal information and to ask us to stop processing it.
However, it also gives us the right to continue to process it if we can demonstrate
compelling legitimate grounds for the processing that override your interests, rights
and freedoms. To exercise your right to object, you can
contact us, giving specific reasons why you are objecting to the processing of
your personal data. These reasons should be based upon your particular situation.

Your right to access

You may contact us at any time to ask to see what personal data we hold about you.

Your right to complain

If you believe that we have mishandled your data, you have the right to lodge a
complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
You can report a concern here
(but do contact us first, so that we can try and help).

Who we are

FixMyStreet is run by mySociety, a UK not-for-profit social enterprise. Our registered
address is:

Cookies

To make our service easier or more useful, we sometimes place small data
files on your computer or mobile phone, known as cookies; many websites do
this. We use this information to, for example, remember you have logged in so
you don’t need to do that on every page, or to measure how people use the
website so we can improve it and make sure it works properly. Below, we list
the cookies and services that this site can use.

Name

Typical Content

Expires

fixmystreet_app_session

A random unique identifier

When browser is closed, or four weeks if “Keep me signed in” is ticked

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use
this site. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its
users and to help us make improvements.

Google Analytics stores information such as what
pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here, what you click
on, and information about your web browser. IP addresses are masked (only a
portion is stored) and personal information is only reported in aggregate. We
do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data for any purpose besides
providing us with analytics information, and we recommend that any user of
Google Analytics does the same.